A Swedish researcher, Staffan Lindeberg, has been studying the inhabitants of Kitava, one of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. He claims that sudden cardiac death, stroke, and exertion-related chest pain never occur in Kitava; and he attributes this to their eating a Paleolithic diet.

2,250 people live on Kitava. They are traditional farmers. Their dietary staples are tubers (yam, sweet potato and taro), fruit, fish, and coconut. They don’t use dairy products, alcohol, coffee, or tea. Their intake of oils, margarine, cereals, and sugar is negligible. Western foods constitute less than 1% of their diet. Their activity level is only slightly higher than in Western populations. 80% of them smoke daily and an unspecified number of them chew betel. The macronutrient composition of the Kitavan diet was estimated as 21% of total calories from fat, 17% from saturated fat, 10% from protein, and 69% from carbohydrates.

Lindeberg’s Kitava study examined a sample of 220 Kitavans aged 14-87 and compared them to healthy Swedish populations. They found substantially lower diastolic blood pressure, body mass index, and triceps skinfold thickness in the Kitavans. Systolic blood pressure was lower in Kitava than in Sweden for men over 20 and women over 60. Total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and apolipoprotein B were lower in men over 40 and in women over 60. Triglycerides were higher in Kitavans aged 20-39 than in Swedes of the same age. HDL was not significantly different. (more…)

Diet advice changes so fast it’s almost a full-time job to keep up with it. Avoid cholesterol; no, avoid saturated fats; no, avoid trans-fats. Avocados are bad; no, avocados are good. Wheat germ is passé; now omega 3s are de rigueur. The supermarket overwhelms us with an embarras de richesses, a confusing superabundance of choices from “organic” to low-sodium. How can we decide what to have for dinner?